Yesterday, I posted an excerpt of Albert Bryski’s autobiography and his memories of a Canadian prairie Christmas in the mid-20th century. Here is his reminiscence of how his family contrived a Christmas “tree” out of a single spruce branch.
We were poor and couldn’t afford a tree from a commercial lot so, my dad would look at me one day in the last week before Christmas and announce that it was time for us to go and cut our tree from our usual source.
We would take a cross-cut saw, hitch our Allis Chalmers tractor to a two-wheeled trailer, and head for the abandoned home-site that was located on one of the quarters of land my father owned. On this site grew four of the largest spruce trees for miles around. Each stood about fifteen metres tall, and each had a girth of about two metres. My dad would carefully walk around each one beforemaking his selection. I would climb up into the tree with the saw until I reached the branch he had so diligently selected. I would cautiously saw through the branch close to the trunk, then hand the branch down into the hands of my dad. He would lay it gently onto the trailer. This branch was now destined to become our two-dimensional Christmas tree.
At home, my dad would mount the tree in a five-gallon pail of sand soaked with water. The firm sand kept the tree erect, and the moisture in the sand helped keep the tree from drying out too quickly. Our tree had to last until at least January 20th, which was the Feast of the Epiphany on the Julian calendar. Because our family celebrated Christmas on December 25th, as it fell in the Gregorian calendar, our tree had to serve its purpose two weeks longer, because all our Ukrainian neighbours celebrated Christmas on January 7th, the day Christmas occurred in the Julian calendar.
The tree would be placed in the corner of the living room. My mom would carefully turn it so it lost its two-dimensional look and resembled a real tree from the front. Because of its location in the corner, you couldn’t see the flatness of the tree from the sides.
In earlier years my brothers and sister would decorate the tree, When they all went to boarding schools for their high school education, my mom and I were left with the task of “putting up” the Christmas tree. Mom and I would decorate the tree with the few cherished ornaments we had. We would hang tinsel and icicles on it, and we would encircle its branches with a golden garland made of twined tinsel. On the top – or at the end of the branch as it really was – we would place an ornament that somewhat resembled a star. The pail at the bottom would have green or red tissue paper covering it. The top of the pail had to be left uncovered so we could water our “tree” daily.
It didn’t even come close to comparing to the magnificence of our present day Christmas trees, but to me in that distant time and distant place, it was a thing of great beauty, and it made our home a warm and happy place during our Christmas celebrations with family and friends.